Cog Sport

Cog Sport is a submission for the OPR Game Jam #3, with the theme "Dual Purpose Design". It is a quick-playing small scale arena combat game for two players.

Designing around the theme proved to be both a challenge and interesting constraint.   A two-colored dice pool is core to design, and can be used not only to fuel the activation of abilities, but also to influence and seize initiative. Dice themselves have value not only in their numeric value, but in their color (positive or negative) as well as the patterns in which they appear with other dice in the pool.

The core combat mechanic allows a defender to strike back at the attacker, but potentially at the risk of incurring more damage, and utilizing resources that could also be used to activate abilities.  The central abilities of the games, the Sciences, are always activated with modifier dice that give both positive and negative impacts.  The player must choose if the momentary advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

One of the greatest challenges in the design was keeping the system tight.  I originally had a chassis selection system featuring light / medium / heavy chassis with different hitpoints, science slots, and movement rates, but removed it.  Also included was an Inventor subsystem for giving team-wide boosts.  While interesting, I felt that the cognitive load of the somewhat weird activation system was high enough on the player that these additional systems would prove to be distractions.

Game design influences include Yahtzee, Battletech, Infinity, Aristeia, and of course OPRs own games FTL and Sellswords.

Art assets used in the moodboard are not my own and include work by the following artists:

* Adam Paquette - Clockwork Warrior: https://www.deviantart.com/adampaquette/gallery
* One Page Rulse - Automa renders